Bitcoin’s mining difficulty recently spiked by a whopping 13.55% and peaked at a new all-time high of 35.6 trillion hashes, according to data provided by BTC.com. It has marked the biggest increase since May 2021.
This, of course, has put more pressure on Bitcoin miners who are struggling to remain profitable due to low cryptocurrency prices.
According to a recent report by Fortune, which cites cryptocurrency mining expert Daniel Frumkin, the recent delivery of new mining rigs is one of the key reasons behind the massive jump.
Large mining farms are currently being deployed at scale in spite of the bear market, which leads to growing competition.
During the ongoing bear market, the prices of high-end mining rigs have dropped significantly. This factor has also contributed to the rapidly growing mining difficulty.
Finally, miners no longer have to deal with very high temperatures, which means that there is now much less downtime. As reported by U.Today, Texas miners were forced to switch off their equipment during summer in order to avoid electricity blackouts.
Bitcoin difficulty gets updated every 2,016 blocks in order to make sure that there is a healthy supply of new coins. Rising difficulty means lower profitability for Bitcoin miners.
The largest cryptocurrency is currently trading at $19,294 on the Bitstamp exchange. Earlier today, the top cryptocurrency dropped to an intraday low of $19,107. Bulls have so far failed to gain a footing above the $20,000 level.
Arman Shirinyan
